


the noise got too loud

by chasinghappiness



Category: Figure Skating (RPF)
Genre: Angst, F/M, mentions of a wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:53:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21517771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasinghappiness/pseuds/chasinghappiness
Summary: It's warm inside the reception hall.
Relationships: Scott Moir/Tessa Virtue
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	the noise got too loud

**Author's Note:**

> this is just pure angst, i'm so sorry.
> 
> based off of that absolutely heinous post tessa made earlier today. how dare she. i'm disgusted.
> 
> title from light on by maggie rogers.

It’s warm inside the reception hall, expected for the middle of July in Southwestern Ontario. The heat is sticky and humid, sweat beading at the back of her neck where her hair meets her skin. The drinks she’s been having since eleven in the morning probably aren’t helping, either. She continues to sip on one of those drinks. The tall glasses of champagne she had been downing previously have recently been replaced with harder liquor, mostly concoctions with a lot of gin hidden in the liquid contained in her cup. Champagne makes her sleepy, weepy, tired. Gin makes her giggly, bouncy, and hot. Very hot.

She touches Jordan’s elbow with a graze of her nail (and that’s something she’s been able to do lately; get her nails done. Bright purple’s and subdued blues, different shapes that make her feel utterly feminine. There’s no one she needs to be concerned with scratching, anymore). “I’m gonna step outside,” she whispers into her sister’s ear.

Jordan looks her up and down once. “Are you okay? Should I come with you?”

Tessa shakes her head and squeezes Jordan’s bicep in assurance. “I’m good.” And she is. Really. She’s just so fucking warm.

The air is cooler outside, thank god. She’s found a small bench amongst a large garden of flowers just behind the hall. They’ve picked a beautiful venue, Tessa has to say. She’s been eyeing this one up ever since she was a little girl, this big stone building on the outskirts of London. When she was younger, she thought it was a castle. Long vines climb up the side of the wall, weaving and ravelling, intricately binding themselves together. Tessa tries to separate them somehow, tries to follow the bound lines up, up, up, until she can see the tops where they no longer intersect, but no matter how hard she tries, there is no hope. She can’t find an end where they aren’t intertwined.

“Hey.” Tessa turns when she hears from behind her the voice she thinks she’s heard most in her life. He’s stood just in front of the closed back door, hands buried deep in his pockets, a crooked smile situated on his face. He looks good, she noticed that fact first thing this morning when she popped into the groomsmen’s dressing room, only to catch him struggling with his bowtie and the other men looking absolutely useless around him. She had sighed and stomped into the room, glaring at his brothers, and picked up the fabric in her hands. _You’ve always been better at this than I have,_ he said with a smile, one that indicated he was both thankful and sorry. That’s been a look he’s carried around her a lot, lately.

“Hi,” she says, soft, surprised that her voice doesn’t get carried away with the sudden wind that has started up around them. She thinks it might begin to storm. How funny. “What are you doing out here?”

Scott shrugs and starts to step closer to her. “It was hot in there.” With a huff, he plops down on the bench beside her, his legs easily falling open, thigh pressed against her own.

“Yeah,” she grumbles, shoving his leg away. “Which is also why I left, so having your gross man heat all over me isn’t helping.”

“Man heat?!” He laughs, loudly. For some reason, Tessa wants to slap a hand over his mouth, worried others may hear, like them sitting out her together, alone, is a bad thing. Her first thought is that they shouldn’t be caught, and that should be her first warning that she should run back inside. She doesn’t. “You’re being a little dramatic there, Tess.”

“What was dramatic was the show you put on at the alter,” she shoots back, looking forward, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth even if she doesn’t find the line very funny. She needs him to think that it’s a joke.

“What show?”

Tessa shoots her eyebrows up at the fountain in front of them. It’s so ridiculously cheesy and a small part of her loves it. “All of those tears. You were marrying her, Scott, not sending her off to war.”

“Who said that being my wife isn’t like battle?” It’s a joke. She shivers when he says _wife_.

It’s quiet around them. The fountain continuously sprays water, her bladder clenching with each drip. She really did drink a lot. Speaking of, she takes a long pull from the glass in her hand, the gin and tonic burning down her throat in a way that makes her feel alive. The urge to down the rest is strong, but the urge to continue being somewhat coherent until she gets to bed in a few hours is stronger.

“Alright.” Scott stands up suddenly and Tessa thinks he’s going to go back inside. It would make the most sense. Someone is probably looking for him, a congratulations on their tongue and their hands already reaching out for a shake or pat on the back (or ass, the Moir’s have always been tactile like that). Except that isn’t what he does. She sees his outreached hand, right in front of her face, and she stares at it. When she doesn’t react, he wiggles his fingers. “You’d think you didn’t hold this hand for twenty-two years.”

“What’s happening?” She can’t ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.

“We’re going to dance.”

Her feet feel numb. “Wh—why?”

“Can you stop acting like sharing a dance with me is the worst thing to ever happen to you and get up here?”

There was that interview she did, about a year ago, where she gave some poetic line of them looking at each other years down the road. She thinks she said some silly age like sixty, that they would be old and grey, and not know a single thing the other was thinking. Looking at him now, his eyes a strange colour she’s never quite seen before, she didn’t realize that sixty would look more like thirty-one and almost thirty-three.

His hand is warm like the reception hall when she slips her own into his. She finds that his chest is even warmer when she’s pressed up against it.

They fall into step easily, like riding a bike. His hands fit seamlessly on her body, one slipped into her own and the other pressing her closer at the base of her spine. In the morning she’ll blame the way her head falls onto his shoulder easily on the copious amounts of alcohol in her veins. She eyes his collar closely, making sure none of her makeup transfers. Her lipstick is red, his wife’s is pink.

“You told me to save the last dance for you,” Scott whispers in her ear.

Her whole body stiffens, and he must feel it from the way his fingers spread and press into the skin of her back, trying to be comforting but utterly failing.

“Shouldn’t that be for your wife?”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“Do you ever think?”

He sighs and places a kiss against her temple. “I thought we established years ago that I don’t.”

“You know,” she says, her lips brushing against the skin of his neck, “I should be used to it, but here I am, silenced with the fact that you would rather dance with me than her.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

From an outside perspective it looks like the perfect dance, but Tessa can see, and feel, the way they have become rusty from just the short time apart. His toes bump into her own, his hand keeps slipping down her back, she knows her shoulders are too high up, almost touching her ears.

There’s a clamour behind them and they shoot apart, like they’re teenagers hiding out in one of their parent’s basement while everyone else is out for the night. Some boy is there, can’t be older than seventeen, and he’s adorning the traditional waiter’s outfit of a white shirt and black waistcoat. He’s got a full garbage bag in his hands that he throws into the big green bin beside the back door, the sound echoing similar to the one that caused them to jump in the first place.

Once the boy heads back inside, Tessa turns to look at Scott. She licks her thumb and reaches for his neck. When she pulls her hand away, the digit is stained red.

“I should go. And you should too.”

Scott hangs his head and all she can think to describe the action is shameful. “Yeah.”

“Scott.”

He looks up.

“I’m happy for you. I really am.”

“Thanks, Tess.”

She turns around and heads straight to the bar once she gets inside. “Gin and tonic, please. Make it a double.”

It’s warm inside, warm when she downs her drink, warm when she has another and another and another, warm when she hugs Scott goodbye and warm when she gets into the awaiting Uber with her sister.

Then when she crawls into bed that night, it’s freezing cold.


End file.
